a great american. that wraps up this hour. i'm stephanie ruhle. i will see you at 11:00 a.m. more news with my friend halle jackson. >> thank you. the election now just three months away is under attack, but the president apparently has a big problem with the investigation into that interference and now, apparently for the first time is directly calling on the department of justice to put an end to the special counsel's work. he's calling the trial of his former campaign chair a hoax, even as that person sits in court right now. prosecutors accusing paul manafort of orchestrating a campaign of his own different from the president's. this campaign to avoid paying taxes on millions of income. and who defensive lawyers are already painting as the real liar? lawmakers blaming russia but facebook is not. not explicitly after it pulled

down dozens of fake accounts aimed at undermining american democracy. we break that down with a bunch of events happening live right now on election safety and how to stop it from happening again. plus the trump factor, with the president prepping for a midterm mission ready to hit the campaign trail hard, rally after rally and at the most recent one, new conspiracy theories are picking up steam. these brought to you by the letter q. we'll tell you what that is and why you should care. welcome to august where it is heating newspaper washington in more ways than one. i want to start with my colleague kelly o'donnell over at the white house. when the president calls on the attorney general jeff sessions to end the russia investigation, that is big news. it also may be aimed at the wrong person. >> reporter: that's because jeff sessions has recused himself from supervision of this russia investigation as you well know and the president who is clearly steeped in current events is tweeting about them lashing out

at his own department of justice and particularly jeff sessions with whom he has had a shaky relationship since the time of the recusal, such a flip from the cozy, friendly supportive relationship through the campaign. sessions recuse the himself following department of justice policy because he had been a campaign surrogate and a member of the transition team. attorney general jeff sessions should stop this rigged witch hunt right now before it continues to stain our country any further. robert mueller is totally conflicted and his 17 angry democrats referring to attorneys who work on the investigation that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to the usa. very strong words, very heated from the president. it would be rod rosenstein who would have authority over robert mueller. sessions could fire rod rosenstein. we have seen this question asked repeatedly over many months and the president has come close to the edge but has not called for

that so directly today. also tweeting about paul manafort, feeling frustrated, even victimized you might say that if there was, in fact, this previous investigation that we now know did exist where authorities had been looking at paul manafort back in 2014 about his financial issues which are the subject of the trial now, not directly related to the campaign. the president writes, paul manafort worked for ronald reagan, bob dole and many other highly prominent and respected political leaders. he worked for me for a very short time. it was roughly five months or so. why didn't government let me know he was under investigation? these old charges have nothing to do with collusion, a hoax. the president is right there that the financial issues that are being examined are not about the campaign. paul manafort worked for him for several months and he worked for him with the express purpose of helping the convention, people forget, you and i lived it, many of our viewers lived it with us that paul manafort was brought in to be the deal maker at the

convention to get trump through that proegs at a time when there was still talk of looking for a way to deny him the nomination and manafort had particular expertise in that with previous republican campaigns. that's the history there, but these tweets certainly stand out, big, bright and bold today as the president is lashing out at people who have been very close to him. >> this thing happened, the president tweeted again. i'll let you check your phone and take a read. he clearly is watching the news. he's talking about how he says russian collusion with the trump campaign one of the most successful campaigns in history is a total hoax. the democrats paid for the phony and discredited dossier which was used to begin the witch hunt. again, that was not what triggered the robert mueller investigation. that was the george papadopoulos issue, but this is an interesting development in that for a couple of days the president hasn't said too much about the trial of his former

campaign chair that is now in day two. we saw movement on monday morning as i think folks geared up for the beginning of this trial. i wonder, the president this morning, maybe keeping an eye on cable at this point. >> reporter: and perhaps feeling the pressure that even if his name, his campaign is not laced throughout the actual arguments as they're put forward before jurors in that case, he knows that it is considered by many people a reflection of his campaign period, his judgment about having manafort and perhaps a sign of the potency of the mueller investigation. so there is per ill even if it's by reflection of donald trump when it comes to what's happening with paul manafort. >> kelly o'donnell, thank you. i want to go over to alexandria where nbc pete williams is in the d.c. bureau keeping an eye in alexandria. paul manafort is in court for

day two. we're starting to see the strategies laid out, shaking out on both sides, can you walk us to the framing of each of these arguments here and what we expected to? >> reporter: today the jury will hear from more people who knew about paul manafort's work in ukraine. the government is laying a careful foundation for his work, the president of ukraine who paid manafort millions of dollars. right now this is going to be a slog through emails, but with people who worked with manafort to try to sketch out the details of what the work he did for them and then the prosecutors will then proceed to how he got paid. what the government says here is that they didn't simply sign a check to paul manafort that supporters of the ukraine president put money in a bank in cypress so that he was not paid directly. what they said is, these oligarchs as the government called them in ukraine did not want it known publicly who they

were supporting. they put the money in cypress and then the money was transferred to another bank account in cypress that manafort had access to. so that's where we are at this stage of the trial and it's well to remember that this is a trial about financial fraud, about defrauding the irs by not paying taxes, by defrauding banks and by not filing foreign bank account reports which are required if you have more than $10,000 in a foreign account. that's what this trial is, so there's a lot of slogging through those sorts of financial records. >> pete williams in our d.c. bureau. thank you much. i want to bring in greg brouwer on set, and greg, let me start with you. let's pick up on day two of the manafort trial. the president is trying to distance himself very clearly from paul manafort now. we've shown on this program how the president has tried to do so, calling paul manafort a good man, saying, well, he barely

worked for me at all. talk through what you think your biggest takeaway is from the trial so far. >> it's moving quickly so far. this is a very experienced no nonsense judge that's going to keep the lawyers on both sides reined in and make sure the jury gets an efficient trial and moves forward as quickly as possible. i think what the government's trying to do is make what is an otherwise very boring paper case interesting for the jury so the jury can stay focused and see this through to conclusion. the defense as is typically the case is going to try to confuse, going to try to distort, it's going to try everything it can do to get the government offtrack. that typically doesn't work. i don't think it's going to work in this case. the jury certainly isn't going to be paying attention or won't being environmeffected at all b

the president is saying. >> the manafort trial prosecutors don't even expect their witnesses to say the words donald trump. it's separate issues, financial crimes, unrelated to his work specifically for the trump campaign. that said, the president is clearly upset about the special counsel investigation that is leading to this trial, a trial which is, in fact, concrete evidence of the special counsel's investigations work even though we don't know how it'll turn out. you have 12 russians indicted a couple weeks ago for interfering with the election in addition to the russians who were indicted before that. does the president also believe that work is a disgrace and should come to an end? >> i am almost certain he feels that way. he cannot separate collusion from election meddling from following the money with paul manafort. this is a big deal and sends a clear signal to the president that this so-called witch hunt is not ending. it is the first trial to come out of robert mueller's investigation and the president is getting freaked out about

this and this is all coming as facebook just unveiled this coordinated campaign of election interference which is under all of this investigation applying to 2016 but 2018. >> you have what the president is about manafort in the past kellyanne conway was brought on when they were in a real hot mess. >> i brought paul in because a very, very smart friend of mine who knew him very well said he is fantastic and he's somewhat political. >> paul manafort who's a good man also, by the way, he was replaced long before the election took place. he was only there for a short period of time. >> he was with the campaign as you know for a very short period of time but i've known him to be a good name. >> paul manafort's a nice guy, he worked for me for a very short period of time, literally

like a couple months, little period of time. >> manafort has nothing to do with our campaign. >> sahill? >> it's the tip of the iceberg. it's the first of many i think prosecutions that mueller is going to pursue and it is a signal to people around the president as to how fearsome mueller is. can we fight him? do we need to cooperate with him? all of that is going to be out there. all of that is that people around the president including his family and former aides will watch closely. >> i just had a conversation with some sources over on the hillside and the conversation came up specifically surrounding election interference and the president's reaction to it. this is something that people are watching incredibly closely. the president's reaction and whether he actually takes any steps moving forward. now he has directed the attorney general to end the

investigation, to end the special counsel investigation. what's happening at the doj right now? are they in crisis mode or pretty smooth sailing as they go about their work? you've worked there. >> it's some where in between. in my experience the men and women at doj both within the main justice and fbi are simply going about their business doing their jobs, but it is not a good situation given the unprecedented comments by the president and the pressure that he's attempting to put on the department. i think largely -- and interestingly, the ag, the dep ty ag, the fbi director, they're more or less ignoring what the president is saying. >> thank you for coming on. we are just three months now away from the midterms and once again this election is under attack. you are looking live at the senate intelligence committee meeting right now on the role russia may be playing this time.

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so while the president this morning goes off about how he feels he's being attacked by the justice department, there's a very real attack taking place on the united states. it's happening on the internet by adversaries who want to undercut democracy and mess with the midterms.

kasie hunt is on capitol hill. what to do? if they can do anything on the legislative side so where are they starting? >> reporter: halle, the challenge primarily and this is a situation where there is actual agreement on both sides of the aisle that this is a real problem and they need to do something about it, the big obstacle is president trump and many lawmakers just don't feel as though he has prioritized this had or taken any real steps to fight back against it in part because he can't confront this without feeling as though it calls his own 2016 win into question and you cover him every day, you know very well how that affects this president. so that's the challenge facing democrats and republicans on capitol hill and this hearing is want to hear from experts about how these campaigns evolve and what potential solutions there might be to try to combat them going forward. mark warner the democratic vice chairman of the senate committee wrote up a white paper.

he has a background himself in technology companies having worked as a tech executive and there's a wide range of proposals, a lot of different types of things, the honest ads act, there are some other ideas around whether you can take your information with you if companies could have a fiduciary responsibility to consumers. take a listen to what senator blumenthal had to say a few minutes ago. >> the warning lights are blinking red again. that's what dan coats, director of national intelligence told us, that's what facebook's detection of these intrusions mean. i give facebook a lot of credit for detecting this continuing russian campaign, really an act of war against our country, that now the trump campaign has to act which so far it has failed to do. >> reporter: he was referencing

dan coats who said all the warning lights are blinking red for the country in trying to deal and grapple with this. facebook had been pretty reluctant to get out in front of any of this. they held a conference call with reporters where they refused to say if russians were meddling. they still haven't said definitively if that's the case but there are suggestions it could be. halle? >> thank you. joe, you've been reporting so much on facebook, what they've been doing. but we have some new reporting now and what else was involved in this foreign influence report that facebook did not reveal take us through it. >> that's right. the business went through some web archives to look at the ads that facebook provided yesterday, the accounts and the pages to see what else was underneath and what we found was much more divisive rhetoric. a lot of it was sewing division and discord among african-americans and hispanics. it's a covert operation, a lot

of the issues that were put forward by facebook they say that people who were behind it are actually covering their tracks better this time around using virtual private networks and third parties as well. there's a senate intel hearing going on right now and we're getting some new reporting and new information out of that on examples of foreign influence in the lead up to the 2016 race. the reason this matters right now is that it's a nugget of hints of what we can expect for 2018 and ira activity that's been disclosed now is people most frequently interacted with po posts on facebook that were pro right wing so we're getting more of that picture, halle. >> jo ling kent, i know you'll stay on top of that. the big question, of course, and thank you, jo, is how might we protect ourselves moving forward? that's what lawmakers are trying

to deal with. with us now is robert johnston. he founded the marine corps. national cyber protection team. thank you for coming on. when you look at the reporting we just laid out from kasie and jo, how much do we not have a handle on this and how much further to we have to go? is it going to get done in time for the midterms? >> the american people wanted to know whether indicts and public attribution were enough to deter the russian government, it was enough to deter the chinese but the american people have that answer. it's not enough to deter the russian government from acting out. >> you're talking about the russians, facebook didn't talk about the russians. they did not lay the blame squarely on the russians. others are like james clapper. watch. >> it's actually the russians. i'm pretty confident it is, you know, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck sort of thing. this is only the tip of the iceberg and i think you also need to look at the other platforms, twitter, for example, and see what's happening there. i think it's much more

widespread than what has been exposed by facebook so far. >> that is a scary as dan coats described it. is this administration doing enough to fight it? >> i don't think so. there's not a successful deterrent model. facebook wasn't ready directly to name the russians. they did say admin accounts were admin accounts they were deleted. i actually read facebook's post as a cry for help. it says, government, you need to step in and declare attribution. they say i will support and defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. it's a title 10 responsibility and title 50 responsibility. facebook isn't ready but the government should be and they need to step up. >> if you're not seeing it from the executive branch, are you seeing more potential of that through the legislative branch, through congress? >> well, i've always been, you know, leadership comes top down. you need to see it from the executive branch.

he's the one that owns the intel agencies. they work for him. his direct yifds are what they're going to push. it's got to come from the top. >> it's tough to see those two headlines side by side. the white house has no coseeive plan to combat it. thank you for coming on the show. president trump fired up in florida with another new campaign stop just announce this had morning in a different key state. he is on a midterm mission but is that a good thing or a bad thing for his fellow republicans? we're running the numbers next. can be relentless. tremfya® is for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. i'm ready. with tremfya®, you can get clearer. and stay clearer. in fact, most patients who saw 90% clearer skin at 28 weeks stayed clearer through 48 weeks.

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and accessoriesphones for your mobile phone. like this device to increase volume on your cell phone. - ( phone ringing ) - get details on this state program call or visit we are learning this morning president trump will be adding another stop to his campaign trail trips this week planning to head to ohio on saturday to back a state senator running for congress. the president is on a mission as we saw last night in florida. that's where the trump factor was on full display. >> reporter: the heat in tampa coming from a fired up president pitching tougher election day rules. >> the time has come for voter i.d. >> reporter: that call followed by this claim that baffled his critics. >> if you go out and you want to buy groceries you need a picture

on a card. you need i.d. >> reporter: his supporters cheering him on as the president highlighted his message on the economy. a rallying cry, part of a speech to rally around a florida congressman running for governor, ron desantis who defends donald trump and delights in his embrace. >> my great friend, a tough, brilliant cookie. >> reporter: rolling out this tongue in cheek ad this week. >> everyone knows my husband ron is endorsed by president trump, but he's also an amazing dad. ron loves playing with the kids. >> build the wall. >> people say ron's all trump but he's so much more. >> big league, so good. >> reporter: the rally part of a ramp up to the midterms with the president expected to pick up the pace after labor day telling fox news he'll hit the trail hard trying to turn out his base for fellow republicans. >> i'll go six or seven days a week when we're 60 days out and

i will be campaigning for all of these great people that do have a difficult race. >> reporter: at the moment he's on a winning streak. in each of the last nine republican primary where he's picked a candidate, his choice won. a hot hand and the president plans to keep playing. >> what can you tell us about the president's plans ahead of the midterms? >> he'll be very active. he'll be out there making the case that he needs the votes here in washington. >> a note on that hot streak, it's one thing to do well picking primary candidates, it's another thing all together to help those candidates beat democrats. the president heads to pennsylvania tomorrow for yet another rally. i'm joined by shawn sullivan, back with me is alex and sahil. thank you so much for being here. shawn, former white house deputy strategist told politico this, president trump now defines the

republican party in the same way that the tea party defined it in 2010. all of the primaries run through the lens of president trump and here is what one supporter at that rally told our own ali about the president. >> it's great that he supports ron dean tis, if he thinks he's good, he might be good. he's right with everyone else. >> reporter: you willing to take his word for? >> i do. anything he says. he hasn't -- everything he says is true, it comes true. >> is this a winning strategy? >> it certainly is a winning strategy in these primaries. when i talk to republican strategists and candidates, they unanimously agree that there is no better stamp of approval you can get in a republican primary than president trump's endorsement. he has the ability to transform a race almost overnight with his endorsement. we've seen this in numerous primaries across the country.

he was able to oust mark sanford by backing his opponent. he entered the georgia and we're seeing it with desantis. this is the golden ticket for candidates but the question is, does this actually translate to a win in november against the democrat and that's what we'll find out. >> there's the trump factor, there's the koch factor. we had reports on our show on monday at that koch brothers conference in which they were going after it seemed or at least speaking out against president trump. he's speaking out right back and you're writing about how the trump feud with the koch network exposed this rift between the populist and establishment. >> absolutely and a lot of republicans right now are sort of caught in between the two of them. they understand that trump's influence is powerful in these primaries, but they also don't really want to alienate the koch brothers.

a lot of republicans we talked to yesterday said we interpret this as a message. they're sending a message to republicans saying, its fine if you want to align yourself with president trump and his trade policies but they're trying to remind republicans there's a cost and the cost is their support in this case. >> the tennessee primaries tomorrow, you're writing about how marsha black burn who is wrapped herself in the trump flag could be in for a bigger fight than expected. >> she is facing a two term ex-governor. he's popular in the state. he's a pragmatist and he's not afraid to take shots at his own party. he's trying to de-emphasize the national side of this race. mars marsha blackburn is running a full on base strategy. it may work in places like north dakota and west virginia but is president going to campaign in colorado.

that's a much tougher -- they have to appeal to a much wider swath of the electorate. >> one thing about a moment that we watched in that story setup there the president saying you need your i.d. to buy groceries. i get carded buying groceries because i buy wine. this was former president bush showing delight and surprise at the grocery scanner. is that overblown? >> trump is doing what he does best which is double down, triple down on these hard line hot button issues. he's turning these long shot candidates into instant favorites by talking about things like that. coming up next, we want to get into our north korea's keeping its promise this week to return the remains of fallen american soldiers to the u.s. when it comes to another pledge, it's doing the complete opposite. we have the new satellite images showing evidence denuclearization might be

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so list be this, there's new confirmation that north korea is still producing ballistic missiles even after that historic summit back in june. there is at least one area where north korea is living up to its commitments, the repatriation of what's believed to be the remains of u.s. soldiers killed in the korean war.

all of this developing overnight. let me bring in keir simmons who is following all of this. >> reporter: i think that needs a little bit of correcting, when you travel to north korea, what you realize is, is that for them we don't talk about the korean war much any more, they talk about it all the time. for officials it is a very important thing. this is a big deal for north korea. it's a big deal for those american families whose fallen loved ones died fighting and among these remains are helmets, there are uniforms and there is one identification tag. >> reporter: on their way home with full honor's this morning, dozens of coffins wrapped in the u.n. flag believed to contain the remains of fallen u.s.

soldiers. >> encouraged by recent cooperation with north korea on this humanitarian effort that enabled the transfer of 55 sets of remains -- >> reporter: the repatriation of u.s. troops a step toward the agreements reached at the historic summit between president trump and north korea's leader kim jong-un. the president praising it last night. >> there's been no nuclear testing or no missiles or rockets flying. >> reporter: both leaders also agreed to work towards north korea's denuclearization. now arms control experts tell nbc news this july 7th satellite photo shows three heavy duty trucks indicating north korea is building long range missiles at a plant outside pyongyang, a plant often visited by kim.

>> when we look at satellite photographs and the country's propaganda, it's been business as usual all year before and after the summit. >> reporter: north koreans haven't tested a missile since november last year, kim jong-un vowing to stop all missile and nuclear testing before agreeing to work towards denuclearization at the singapore summit. now the state department promising to keep kim jong-un to his word. >> what we're going on is the commitment that chairman kim made to our president and that is the commitment to denuclearize. >> reporter: the secretary of state also admitting last week that the north koreans are still producing nuclear weapons fuel but that may not be breaking the agreement because, of course, as you'll remember, one of the issues with that agreement with president trump is there wasn't very much detail. >> right. thanks for coming on the show. we want to turn now to that news we told you about at the top of the show, the president

calling on his attorney general to end the russia investigation into election interference. jeff sessions has recused himself from that from the oversight. it's rod rosenstein who oversees robert mueller but already this morning we're getting new reaction from capitol hill. watch. >> if it isn't obstruction of justice itself, it is evidence of intent to obstruct justice. these kinds of threats are no accident. they reflect the state of mind and intent to obstruct justice. >> the longer this thing goes on, by the thing i mean the investigation, the more spin there's going to be, the more innuendo, the more -- there will be more rumors and more back and forth and i think many americans are thoroughly confused. i don't blame people for offering their opinion. if i were being investigated in what i thought was an unjust

investigation, i would be vocal about it too. >> i expect you'll see a lot of lawmakers getting asked about this on the hill today. >> exactly. it's become such a partisan issue, one thing is clear from the president's tweets, he might not understand what is going on here. if he's still calling on session to end this after he recused himself, what does he think sessions has the power to do besides fire rosenstein? >> he knows sessions recused himself because that ticked him off. >> he wanted an attorney general who would have his back. jeff sessions knows he has a duty to the country not just to the president. there's a coordinated effort in the party to try to delegitimize this investigation in the eyes of the voter and shut it down. one thing that's really struck me there's a finance poll that

shows that 40% of republicans either -- if the russians did meddle to help republicans keep congress, 40% of republicans think that's either appropriate or not that big of a deal. it's gone from the place where they say they doubt to it happens where if it did happen, a lot of them aren't bothered by it. >> remarkable indeed. we'll also going to dive into a different one, one you may have some questions about. a conspiracy theory movement making its way out of the darkweb and toward the political stage. what is behind that q symbol popping up on t-shirts and signs at the president's rally and why the group behind it is targeting some of the hollywood's biggest names? - anncr: thankfully, prevagen helps your brain and improves memory. - dad's got all the answers. - anncr: prevagen is now the number-one-selling brain health supplement in drug stores nationwide. - she outsmarts me every single time. - checkmate!

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bravo, tall meeting man. start winning today. book now at lq.com so this segment right now is brought to you this morning by the letter q, as in the letter on the t-shirts of trump supporters in tampa, the letter on signs like the one you're looking at saying we are q, so what is q? you should instead be asking, who is q? q is an anonymous user who started posting cryptic messages in the dark fever swamps of the internet last year, someone claiming to be a high level government official sharing bread crumbs about the deep state supposedly conspiring to

take down president trump. this q network then tries to follow those crumbs, those conspiracy clues and floods youtube and other sites with what they found. in this fringy alternate universe, senior democrats were on a secret child sex trafficking network, in the real world, they do not. the special counsel investigation is actually just a cover to really take down hillary clinton and barack obama, because they were corrupted by the kremlin. another conspiracy theory. the hot topic right now, the military convinced donald trump to run for president in 2016, part of the long game so the president and his military allies can now take down the deep state. so here's the thing, the difference today these fringe theories are now starting to see the light of day. like, q supporters showing up at rallies like last night. more traction after some famous faces roseanne barr brought up

these conspiracy theories online. i want to bring in ben collins. you have been owning a lot of the reporting on q. "the washington post" puts it this way, what tuesday's rally in tampa made apparent is that the devotees don't just exist in the far reaches of the web. >> we're talking videos with hundreds of thousands of views, probably millions of people believing this and you saw it last night at tampa for donald trump. this is showing up everywhere and it's showing up on amazon.com. you can by q merchandise. until last month, the number 10 paid app on the app store amongst mine craft was a q drop app. this is stuff like hillary clinton is mixing baby blood into cement, totally bananas, off the chart stuff.

but people really believe this stuff and it's because the platform let it go unchecked. >> you say it's both emotional and socioeconomic like pizzagate on basically. >> it's every conspiracy theory built into one. it's all these things, if all of these things weren't debunked already, it's the concept a kava wlchlt has been running the united states. platforms haven't stopped it yet. >> the theories are not just targeting politicians some celebrities are caught up. youtube is one of them. you work with nbc's jo ling kent. >> two holley woods icons the targets of false conspiracy. >> stephen spielberg is a

pedophile. >> i'm just showing you that tom hanks is part of the system. >> casual search for tom hanks turned up videos accusing him of being a pedophile. direct ler steven spielberg getting the same treatment. it pushes false allegations that a child sex ring is being run by hollywood celebrities and democratic politicians. all of this uncovered by nbcnews.com. >> and by you, ben collins. what the ultimate goal? >> it absolves president trump of everything that he's done wrong. if their eyes, it's a great thing. there are ways they take tip pos -- typos to -- it's fan fiction. same way that if you were to read like people trying to put together two people in a sit-com

on the internet, it's the same exact thing. people role playing politics. and the goal is to make it so the lives of their political -- are simply impossible. you saw it with pizzagate, private citizens affected by this. it's the same sort of thing. they try to make it so people whose lives are affected by the trump campaign, make it impossible. >> you know, this is really dangerous they're showing up to the rallies now. i would expect them in the future. but if we use the pizzagate as an example, that was one person who took this off line. now they are moving en masse to the physical space, we should not be surprised if any of this turns into protests at the very least, or something more scary and dangerous. >> a very scary thought. >> conspiracy theories are not new but it's much worse because of the internet. and president trump, he's in many ways a conspiracy theory

president. his foundation, the birther won conspiracy about -- conspiracy theory ted cruz's dad involved in jfk, millions of illegal votes. these social media platforms have a difficult choice to make. they want to be a free for all and let free speech but they have a responsibility at some level to decide what content is acceptable. >> thank you. ben collins with the word of the day. banana as. thank you for coming on. we'll be right back with today's big picture.

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so before we go, let's wrap up with our sources are telling us. what do your sources say? >> my sources say the florida senate race is turning out to be a problem for democrats. they're worried they'll have to spend a lot of money to hold the seat. rick scott is a two term g governor. the democrats were optimistic about holding the race point out scott has run twice statewide in two very republican years. and only won by one point. it's not that they're nervous about losing but worried they'll have to divert resources. >> think president trump will go back down to campaign?

>> that depends on the strategy. >> democrat ix sources i talk to are sort of discrediting cortez's. they're saying she is a non-issue and people may not know her but republicans say she is so good for their base they should start paying her to campaign in some distributes. i would expect more republicans like ron desantis to sort of make her the new woman. >> she's become a lightning rod for members of the gop who love talking about her. she seem to think she is good for them. >> because they can convince people to be afraid of democratic controlled congress by using her as that main point person. >> rock and roll show. thanks. today, it's a cool one that comes to us from vietnam. check it out. it's a group of tourists taking a stroll through two concrete giant hands coming out of the

mountain side. it's designed to make visits feel like they are walking on a shimmering walkway held up by god. that's the background on that one. photographer here for afp would like to hear your thoughts as always on facebook, twitter, snap chat and instagram. see you later on at the white house. we understand the press secretary has just added a briefing. that's going happen at 1:00, eastern, 10:00 pacific time. see you there. ali velshi. stephanie ruhle. >> i get to talk to you later. best part about the press briefing. >> they're contentious. >> that's a good point. >> did you see bleeding? >> bleed later. bleed into the show. >> you mean like as a tv term. >> yeah. >> okay. >> great. good thing -- it's -- this is all on tape. when it doesn't work as smooltly as we like we can edit it out of the show. have a good morning. >> morning everyone.

>> i'm sorry. >> scrap this. >> i didn't mean to do that to you. >> good morning everyone. i'm stephanie ruhle. >>. >> we're going to have tremendous voter security that will include the wall. may have to do some pretty drastic things but we're going to get it. time has come for voter id, like everything else. voter id. if you go out and want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card. you need id. our farmers are true patriots because china and others have targeted. china and others. remember this. have targeted our farmers. not good. nod not nice. you know what the farmers are saying? it's okay. we can take it. we' we're doing